On Mondays and Fridays my work day starts in the same flustered and awkward fashion. I attempt to enter the palliative care unit of the hospital. I’m juggling my guitar case, music satchel and fancy homemade lunch. My lunch swings and lurches across the side of my guitar case in a plastic bag hanging from a cramped finger. I never seem to have enough hands. I’m always running late for work and there is never anyone to help me enter through the secured side door of the ward. I usually have to put something down on the cold wet concrete path in order to pull my swipe card from my pocket. Clumsily, I manage to pull the card out, coins and guitar picks bounce across the concrete. I try to minimise my losses.

There is a sign on the door to the ward, ‘Please shut the door quietly in consideration of the patients and visitors’. The door is wider and heavier than most doors for a good reason. I’m not the most coordinated guy, and as hard as I try, when I manage to squeeze myself and my baggage through the door, I somehow never achieve the perfect silent and considerate entry that I wish for. I pull the door open, jam my left foot to wedge it in an attempt to slip stealthily into the ward. Without fail, the back of the guitar case gets caught, making a loud bang. I trip a little and I muffle my swearing tirade. Just like every other time.